Its quite easy, when parents ask what they should do over the summer, we only recommend they read books of their choice. Reading books means your homework is more in your control, not worksheets you really don't want to do, its a chance to direct your own knowledge-building!
I attended a prep school in Rhode Island for high school. For the summers, the school gave students reading lists of books from which we were expected to read. I remember the summer before my freshman year reading Herman Wouk, Harper Lee, Jack London, etc. -- authors that were on their list.
On another matter, what do you make of the following approach by the Alpha School in Austin Texas, which uses AI to tutor students, and which seems able to compress all the learning kids need to do into two hours aday (scroll down to the relevant section):
It seems that the Nova approach and Ben Carson’s approach can be married.
Nova only requires 3 1/2 hours of school. Why not add a book a week from a reading list for all that other time they have. I bet it would increase to more than a book a week fairly quickly.
I was looking for a specific law (1986 vaccine) and couldn’t find the text on the congressional website and complained to my daughter. She then looked and eventually found the text. hilariously She said that’s cause you didn’t use use google. I have to use different engines depending on my search.
Yes, I know situations where Google actively biases search to make it impossible to find what you are looking for. The issue with this interview, however, is different. It has to do with the domain authority of a site and how Google insists on "coherent semantic content," so that if the site is sending too many diverse signals about too many things that Google can't conveniently place under some rubric, the site loses domain authority and its pages don't rise up in the search engines. Content sites like the one where the interview originally appeared are condemned to play an SEO game, and playing that game often means removing content that the search engines are penalizing (like amputating a gangrenous finger). Going to another search engine is irrelevant here because Google has such huge market share, so sites in business to make money need to keep Google happy (it doesn't matter if a search engine like duckduckgo values the content, because it controls hardly any of the overall search traffic, and SEO-based sites depend on that overall traffic).
Its quite easy, when parents ask what they should do over the summer, we only recommend they read books of their choice. Reading books means your homework is more in your control, not worksheets you really don't want to do, its a chance to direct your own knowledge-building!
I attended a prep school in Rhode Island for high school. For the summers, the school gave students reading lists of books from which we were expected to read. I remember the summer before my freshman year reading Herman Wouk, Harper Lee, Jack London, etc. -- authors that were on their list.
On another matter, what do you make of the following approach by the Alpha School in Austin Texas, which uses AI to tutor students, and which seems able to compress all the learning kids need to do into two hours aday (scroll down to the relevant section):
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/t-rex-wars-friday-june-6-2025-c-and
It seems that the Nova approach and Ben Carson’s approach can be married.
Nova only requires 3 1/2 hours of school. Why not add a book a week from a reading list for all that other time they have. I bet it would increase to more than a book a week fairly quickly.
Interesting thought. Graft a book reading group onto the Studia Nova program. This idea has merit.
This censorship situation is appalling really.
What search engines do you use?
I was looking for a specific law (1986 vaccine) and couldn’t find the text on the congressional website and complained to my daughter. She then looked and eventually found the text. hilariously She said that’s cause you didn’t use use google. I have to use different engines depending on my search.
Yes, I know situations where Google actively biases search to make it impossible to find what you are looking for. The issue with this interview, however, is different. It has to do with the domain authority of a site and how Google insists on "coherent semantic content," so that if the site is sending too many diverse signals about too many things that Google can't conveniently place under some rubric, the site loses domain authority and its pages don't rise up in the search engines. Content sites like the one where the interview originally appeared are condemned to play an SEO game, and playing that game often means removing content that the search engines are penalizing (like amputating a gangrenous finger). Going to another search engine is irrelevant here because Google has such huge market share, so sites in business to make money need to keep Google happy (it doesn't matter if a search engine like duckduckgo values the content, because it controls hardly any of the overall search traffic, and SEO-based sites depend on that overall traffic).